Forty Eight.
Chapter One.
The Isle of Peace.
Aquidnec—“Isle of Peace!”
Oh, Coddington, and ye Assistants of the General Court! what craze possessed you to change this fair title of the red aboriginal for the petty appellation of “Rhodes?”
Out upon your taste—your classic affectation! Out upon your ignorance—to mistake the “Roodt” of the old Dutch navigator for that name appertaining to the country of the Colossus!
In the title bestowed by Block there was at least appropriateness—even something of poetry. Sailing around Sachuest Point, he beheld the grand woods, red in the golden sun-glow of autumn. Flashed upon his delighted eyes the crimson masses of tree foliage, and the festoonery of scarlet creepers. Before his face were bright ochreous rocks cropping out from the cliff. Down in his log-book went the “Red Island!”
Oh, worthy Coddington, why did you reject the appellation of the Indian? Or why decree such clumsy transformation to that of the daring Dutchman?
I shall cling to the old title—“Isle of Peace”; though in later times less apt than when the Warapanoag bathed his bronzed limbs in the tranquil waters of the Narraganset, and paddled his light canoe around its rock-girt shores.
Since then, Aquidnec! too often hast thou felt the sore scathing of war. Where now thy virgin woods that rejoiced the eyes of Verrazano, fresh from Tuscan scenes? Where thy grand oaks elms, and maples? Thy green pines and red cedars? Thy birches that gave bark, thy chestnuts affording food; thy sassafras laurel, restorer of health and life?
Gone—all gone! Swept away by the torch
